We have profiles all over the place, pictures, links, likes, dislikes, favorites and widgets. There are movies, music and clubs. There are groups, messages, inboxes and discussion boards. In fact, there are so many pieces to the puzzle that re-membering — actually putting all of your virtual limbs together — is a challenge.
But what happens, one day, when it all stops?
Never happen to you? Think again.
Because social networks rely on the power and reliability of the network members, there can be consequences for even a perceived breach of the “terms and conditions.” A friend of mine experienced this with Google AdWords some time ago … analytics seemed to indicate that he was inflating his clickthroughs by some kind of robot/program and he was therefore removed from the program. A couple of appeals went nowhere, and to this day he is on the blacklist. And while he was completely innocent of the charges, there was no further avenue to appeal.
Fair enough … this is Google’s network and they can do what they want
But what happens to the personal detail that is held in these networks when they turn you off … or, perhaps more importantly, when they close down (as they do)?
This question was raised by Harry Joiner this morning … as he had been evicted from Facebook.
And while Harry may have a beef … what about you or I? What about sites like Flickr? What happens to your personal content that resides on their network? What about the time that you have put into building your social network through links, messages and groups? Where does that investment go (and what happens to the images/digital assets you created)?
If our digital personalities are the sum total of the digital traces that we leave across the web, then the question of trust and ownership arise here. It is not just about the files and connections. It’s about something more important.
So … who owns YOU?

Eric’s comments were so spot-on that I thought you’d benefit from knowing how misguided I can be sometimes.  He’s known this for years.

Harry,

From my point of view, [mock sales presentation interviews such as the ones you describe] are ineffective relative to real life.  It forces a salesperson to pitch benefits to a client he has little to no idea about — rather than to test his capability to probe and do proper discovery in order to present a solution.  If you are hiring a song and dance man, that idea works fine — but not in professional selling where complex products are involved and you are trying to get a customer to buy a big ticket item.

-Eric

Okay, so I got carried away. Kudos as well to Jim Cundiff who flagged me for missing the mark on this post.

On the personal front, my wife gave birth to our new baby daughter, Vivian Marie, on June 18.  Mom and baby were doing fine until Monday, June 25.  Beautiful baby.  Just beautiful.  Our fifth, btw.

Let me say how impressed I am with Northside Hospital in Atlanta.  Locally, the place is known as a "baby mill" — and ladies, if you get a chance to deliver there, do it.  They have the whole thing down to a nit.  Every tiny corner of Northside’s sprawling complex is filled with little signs and reminders for staff members on how to treat patients with the utmost care.

Get Good People

But just because you show a line-level employee a sign doesn’t mean that they will treat their customers with real empathy.  That starts with hiring the right people.  Northside has this function dialed in, I assure you.  They anticipated my wife’s every need — and when things got "exceptional" they were able to use their common sense and deeply specialized knowledge of pediatric care to put out the fires.

So we delivered baby Vivian a week ago Monday, and continued to rave about Northside to anyone who would listen.

But this past Monday morning, my wife became very ill and had to be whisked away in an ambulance to Northside’s ER.  I won’t get into the details, but it was pretty intense.  My father-in-law used to tell me that "When you are healthy, you have a million problems.  When you’re not healthy, you have one problem."

My wife (and I) spent Monday and most of Tuesday in Intensive Care.  She’s fine, and we’re home.  She’s on bed rest, and the prognosis is excellent.

But again:  When we were in the ICU, Northside’s staff was un-be-liev-able.  I’m talking about real empathy here, which is amazing considering that hospitals are temples of controlled chaos.  There’s no point in managing by exception in an environment whose very existence is predicated on round-the-clock crisis.  As a nurse, there’s no use pretending to care.  You either do or you don’t.  Nobody can fake it all the time.

The Miserable Majority

Two years ago I heard an HR statistic that 66% of all workers hate their jobs.  Hate.  Sixty-six percent.  I don’t know if that’s true — but even if the number is only 26%, then one in four people who are paid to serve you throughout your day (grocery clerks, postal workers, cab drivers, etc.) are doing so while transmitting the vibe that "my job sucks and my company sucks and I wish I were someplace else."  Friends, you’re never going to win the hearts and minds of your clients like that, I assure you.  Technology and branding are irrelevant if you’re hiring "well poisoners."

Good service is devine.

I won’t get religious here, but I’ll share something religious with you just to make a point:

There’s an old Christian sermon about treating everyone around you AS IF they were Christ (or God) Himself.  Get it?  God is occupying the body of some random person that you meet — just to see how you will treat them.  Sort of like a Mystery Shopper.  The story ends with the Bible verse "As you did it for the least of your brethren, you did it for Me."  There’s probably a similar parable in the Qur’an, the Torah, and the sacred scriptures of other faiths.  Pretty universal concept.

I imagine that if you simply used this verse as your company’s mission statement, you’d make a ton of money.  I’m not even sure the industry matters.

Certainly, the line-level staff members at Northside embrace this principle.  And now I’m blogging about it.  Tell your friends.  Send them a link to this post.  And for God’s sake, hire those rare individuals who are genetically coded to care for others.  In a pinch, they’ll make all the difference to your customer experience.

Now have a nice day.  And see to it that everyone around you does, too.  The money will take care of itself.

1. Every candidacy needs a “central selling theme” and
2. Attitude is everything.

When I say every candidacy needs a central selling theme, I mean that there should be one simple, relevant theme surrounding WHY a candidate is the best fit for the organization.  Seriously.

Abraham Zaleznik of the Harvard Business School said nearly 35 years ago that all too often, it is not the most qualified candidate who gets hired — but the one whom the hiring committee believes can contribute something lasting and meaningful to the company’s existing management mix.  Not much has changed.

Indeed, I have seen incredibly qualified C-level candidates come out of interviews in a body bag because the "chemistry" just wasn’t there.  And one key element of chemistry is being able to convey your selling story to a hiring committee in a way that is short, punchy, and memorable.  Like Johnny Cochran’s "If it doesn’t fit — you must acquit."  Just like in jury trials (See Pg. 5).

My client is relatively new to ecommerce, and some of their VP’s are nervous that a top-flight Director of Ecommerce will bring about revolutionary change (as opposed to evolutionary change).  So I told my candidate that his drumbeat should be "With ecommerce behind it, _____’s best days are ahead of it."

Granted, this tagline didn’t trumpet my candidate’s name all over the place.  But humility is a key element of my client’s culture, and any attempt by my candidate to sell himself so brazenly would have killed his chances.  So it was best for him to elevate the client’s existing management team through his tagline.  By making himself the Best Supporting Actor, he gets himself hired.  At least that’s the theory.  I’ll let you know next week if he got the job …

The other aspect of chemistry is attitude.  And as my father-in-law would say, "Stay loose and you can win."  Somehow, with job interviews, the harder you try, the worse they turn out.  Not sure why that is.  But if you try too hard, you come across as trying too hard.  And companies can smell a disingenuous candidate — unless the company is so dysfunctional that you’d be crazy to work there.

So how does one stay loose?  Well, you simply have to keep things in perspective.

Which brings me to Robert De Niro.  Several years ago I read an article in Esquire about celebrities and their Big Breaks — when they got them, how they recognized them, and how they handled them.

The writer asked Mr. De Niro about his Big Break — which Mr. De Niro said was the audition for the role of Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (strange, I know, since Mr. De Niro had previously won an Oscar for his role in Godfather II.).

I’m not a movie buff, but the story goes that every talented young actor in Hollywood was dying for the part.  And a ton of great actors auditioned.  But Mr. De Niro strolled in for his audition, read the part, and nailed it.

So the article’s writer asks Mr. De Niro "Were you nervous?"

"Nope," replies the star.  "I never got nervous before auditions.  Ever."

"Why’s that?" asks the interviewer.

"Because I didn’t have the part when I arrived.  What’s the worst that could happen?  I’d leave without the part.  The way I saw it, every audition was pure upside.  All opportunity and no risk."

* * * * *

Kung fu …
That was one of my good ones
Well what’s a few broken bones
When we all know it’s good clean fun?
Skateboards …
I’ve almost made them respectable.
You see I can’t always get through to you,
So I go for your son.
- Joe Jackson, "I’m the Man"

I have pointed out on these pages that the average US citizen gets hit with more than 5000 commercial messages a day.  Everything from "I’d rather be driving a Titleist" to the logo on your watch.  Your brain is under constant assault.  You know it.  We all know it.  We are marinating in marketing all the time.

And as the guys over at YourMarketingSucks.com know, my wife and I run a pretty tight ship when it comes to what our four kids can watch on TV.  Look, I’m not a bad guy.  I love marketing, but I know how effective it can be.  And what marketers are doing to kids today isn’t much different than what the spy-ware companies try to do with your computer.

My kids need things, and I want to buy them things.  The latest things, in fact.  But there’s a limit to what’s productive for them to want.  My 8-year-old girl is chomping at the bit to be the next Hillary Duff.  However, I’m not gonna buy her thigh-high boots no matter who she sees wearing them.  Call me Tipper Gore if you want.

Hollywood sees it differently.

Several weeks ago, the makers of the new blockbuster movie, Spiderman 3, started running trailers on Cartoon Network.  Naturally, the trailers looked really cool to all of my kids, age 11, 8, and 5 (twins).  Normally, Cartoon Network is pretty innocuous.  What’s not to like about cartoons, right?

So the trailers run and say "This movie is not yet rated."  And I’m thinking "Right.  It’s a $50 million dollar movie coming out in 14 days and they don’t know what it’s going to be rated?  My eye."  Meanwhile, my kids are getting amped about seeing Spiderman 3, even going so far as to plan out when I’m going to take them.

Finally, this afternoon a Spiderman 3 "sneak-a-peek" airs on Cartoon Network, immediately followed by a showing of Spiderman 1.  My kids have got the popcorn and Sprite all teed up in the rec room, and they’re rubbing their little hands, w a i t i n g … Then the bomb drops when the announcer says

"Spiderman 3 and 1 are rated PG-13."

Now I’ve got a fight on my hands.  Only Jack, my 11-year-old, is OKed to watch PG-13 flicks, and then only selectively.  He’s 11.  He doesn’t need to watch graphic gun-fights and make-out scenes and the usual PG-13 fare.  Soon, but not now.  And I’ll be damned if my 8-year-old girl is going to soak in that — let alone my twins.  But when I broke up the party, you’d have thought I was Osama Bin Laden.  All hell broke loose, and you could hear the uproar a mile away.

As a marketer, I’m impressed with what Hollywood did.  If they had said from the get-go that Spiderman 3 was going to be rated PG-13, then things never would have gotten so far out of hand.  I would have red-lighted Project Spiderman immediately for everyone but Jack.  Hollywood knew that, so they kept a lid on the rating until my all of my kids were literally screaming to see the movie.  Literally.  Screaming.  Now that’s marketing.

The New Economics of the Entertainment Business

My kids get me and their grandparents to buy them a lot of entertainment — and neither me, their grandparents, nor my kids are inclined to download it illegally off of the Web.

Which is exactly why young kids are such a hot market for media companies:  They or someone who loves them actually pays for what they consume.  Miracle of miracles!  According to a recent WSJ article, this explains why Hannah Montana is one of Disney’s most profitable entertainment franchises.  There’s a "near zero" piracy factor among very old and very young people.

So here’s what I’ve learned from this episode …

Hollywood is like a drug dealer.  They know who watches Cartoon Network.  Little kids who are too young to attend their movie without my accompaniment — which is tantamount to my endorsement.

Hollywood knows that if they give my kids a free taste of their stuff, my kids will come back for more — at my expense (which makes it better than the "real" illegal drug business, where the addict pays).  And like a real drug dealer, Hollywood doesn’t care how their product effects my kids as long as they make money.

What do YOU think?

This week, it’s “professions from the past”–unusual ones, some of which now exist only as surnames or historical curiosities.
A century ago, those who rounded up debtors and tossed them into prison were called catchpoles (literally, chicken-chasers). A napier was in charge of the table linens in a royal household.
Garg points out that, with the passage of time, professions of the past fade away and new ones take their place. The Department of Labor routinely eliminates outmoded job titles from its database. “Titles such as bonbon dipper and rubber attacher have been bounced recently,” according to Inc.com writer Scott Westcott.
The internet, social media, and 3D virtual worlds make things interesting, too. As Garg says, “These days it’s not unusual to find titles such as Chief Privacy Officer or Blogger-in-Chief on corporate payrolls, professions… unheard of just a few years back.”
Which made me think about some of the newer job titles I’ve seen cross my inbox lately. In her regular communications with MarketingProfs members, our own Shelley Ryan has a little fun with her title: one week she’s the Premium Communications Samurai, the next she’s Premium Plus Camp Counselor, or Mission Control, or Seminar Junkie, Den Mother, or (my favorite) Pollen Magnet.
Other, emerging titles are significantly more real, even if they do sometimes seem equally made up. Blogging is increasingly becoming a corporate job, but “Chief Blogging Officer” really does sound a little silly to me. And lots of companies have “evangelists.” There’s more:

• The American Cancer Society has a Manager of Futuring and Innovation Based Strategies.
• Electric Sheep has a resident futurist (is there a non-resident futurist, as well?).
• IBM has a Vice President of Development for its Emerging Business Opportunity in Digital Convergence. (Paul Ledak: With that title, does your business card fit in your wallet?)

I’ve also noticed:

• VP of Emerging Media
• Chief Risk Officer
• Chief Evangelist
• New Media Specialist
• Chief Diversity Officer
• Virtual World Bureau Chief (The one and only Adam Pasick.)
• Chief Interruptor Officer (Jaffe: This means you.)
• Instigator
• Brand Champion
• Content Analyst

Harry Joiner, an executive recruiter who is more up on this stuff that I am, has a laundry list of
101 Internet Marketing Job Descriptions. And even then, the list isn’t exhaustive–it skips a lot of new media titles I’ve seen passed around lately.
I asked Harry, who also blogs here, about the growth of job titles in the past few years. He said “just about anything involving interactive is new from the last five years. The functions (like email manager and affiliate marketing manager) aren’t new–but companies’ hiring for those specific positions is a new thing.” And, he added, the Web 2.0 and social media titles are mushrooming, too.
Another thing about the Internet is… when you need a little help, you can usually find an online tool. If you are having trouble coming up with a new title to impress your friends and colleagues, give this a whirl.
So how about you? Got a 2.0 title or seen one recently? Add it here.